[ale] the testing messages you DIDN'T ignore

[Ron Frazier (ALE)]

On 7/4/2013 2:30 PM, William Bagwell wrote:
> On Thursday 04 July 2013, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>    
>> The messages with digits
>> contain exactly 1000 characters.  In the ones with spaces, the space
>> replaces the zeros.  Note, I did not type any exclamation points.  I'll
>> elaborate later.
>>
>> High praise and honor to any one who figures it out with just the data
>> you now have.
>>      
> Tablet is not wrapping and the exclamation is at the end of a very long line.
>    

It's not quite that simple.  I'll elucidate the best I can, which is 
limited.

Please note this message:
Re: [ale] pc testing - copy paste - please ignore - 07/03/13 11:30 PM

This is a string of 1000 characters sent from my pc.  The last character 
I typed on the 1st (and only) line is character 989.  Then the 
exclamation point.

Now note this message:
Re: [ale] testing tablet - ignore please - 07/03/13 11:27 PM

This is the same string of 1000 characters sent from the tablet.  The 
last character I typed is at 989, then the exclamation point.  Same result.

I think Alex has identified the issue here.  The mail server is hard 
coded to limit lines to 990 characters.  It's probably what's inserting 
the exclamation point and carriage return.  But, there is more to the 
story than this.

The most common technique of typing an email is to simply type until 
you're done with a paragraph and hit enter once or twice.  However, the 
email client does NOT insert hard breaks into the lines as I'll demonstrate.

Note this message:
Re: [ale] pc testing - copy paste with space - please ignore - 07/03/13 
11:34 PM

This is the same 1000 characters, sent from the pc, except that there 
are spaces in place of zeros.  Other than that, I sent it as one 
continuous character string.  When I display the resulting message on 
Eudora, which is based on Thunderbird, I see rows of repeating 
123456789(sp) on my screen.  Note that there is no exclamation point at 
character 990.  But, this was sent as one continuous string of characters.

The lines appear to break at the right side of the screen, and continue 
on the next line.  So, you might say to yourself, the client is 
inserting line breaks after 13 groups of digits, or however many you see 
on your screen.  However, it's not that simple either.  I see 13 groups 
of digits on each line.  I'll bet that some of you see different numbers 
of groups.

Try this.  Display the last message mentioned.  Go to your view menu (if 
using Eudora or Thunderbird, others should be similar), select zoom, and 
zoom in or hit the hot key to do that.  Zoom in as far as you can.  In 
my case, the font gets very big and I now see 4 groups of digits on each 
line.  But, I see 4 on EVERY line.  If there were normal line breaks, I 
would see some lines that were jagged and not exactly 4 groups.  Now, 
zoom out as far as you can.  In my case, the font now becomes unreadably 
small and I see 43 groups of digits on one line.  If there were line 
breaks at groups of 13, they would still be at 13.  So, there are no 
fixed line breaks in the string of text.  Note that this is the file 
that worked fine, without showing any exclamation point in the text.

Now note this message:
Re: [ale] forgive test messages - t.s. malformed msgs - tablet w spaces2 
- 07/04/13 01:41 AM

This is the same as the previous one, 1000 characters with spaces where 
the zeros would be, except this was sent from my tablet.  This one fails 
with an exclamation point at character 989.

Clearly, there is something different about the tablet.  But, again, the 
text before the exclamation point does NOT have fixed line breaks in 
it.  I can zoom it in and out and I always get a consistent number of 
groups per line, up to the point where the exclamation point occurs.

After googling around a bit, I think this has something to do with hard 
versus soft line breaks and the concept of "flowed" text.  However, 
exactly what the tablet is doing differently from the pc, I cannot say.  
I do know that I can type paragraphs in excess of 1000 characters on the 
pc and the problem does not show.  When I do that on the tablet, it does 
show.

None of my email clients have any controls for setting line length.

This is obviously not a critical problem.  But it certainly is annoying 
and mysterious.

No high praise and honor just yet.  8-)

Sincerely,

Ron


-- 

(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)

Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com
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